


just a piece of paper

by palomeheart



Series: just a piece of paper [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2017, Established Relationship, Just Talking About It, M/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 21:23:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18599674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palomeheart/pseuds/palomeheart
Summary: Phil doesn't think marriage is just a piece of paper.





	just a piece of paper

**Author's Note:**

> My take on Phil's infamous 'marriage is just a piece of paper' statement. Most of it was written in 2017, so it's set in 2017.
> 
> Thanks to [@javaradiation](https://javaradiation.tumblr.com/) for betaing!

Phil has a general rule that if he’s not tagged in a post about himself, he has no business looking at it. Even most of the ones he’s tagged in he probably doesn’t, especially on Tumblr. Dan tends to get more curious. He’s normally the one to delve a little too deep and then come gasping back up for air, suddenly insecure about a new body part he had never really considered before, or questioning the problematic nature of practically everything he’s ever said. Phil, though, is better at avoiding those wormholes and the subsequent identity crises. Usually. But he has a soft spot for looking at fanart of him, or them, and sometimes it veers into unwanted territory.

Today it’s nothing particularly bad or invasive, just a throwaway comment. Something small, but something that’s been slowly chipping away at his practiced apathy for a while now. He grumbles a bit, then sneaks a look at Dan, scrolling contentedly on the other side of the couch in just his pants and an oversized jumper. He doesn’t seem to notice Phil’s first grumble, or his second slightly louder harrumph. Feeling simultaneously unjustified and unjustly ignored, Phil snaps his laptop shut and throws himself down onto Dan with a dramatic sigh, burying his face into Dan’s thigh.

“Overly cute unlikely animal friendship compilation or accidental phan overload?” Dan asks, moving to slide his fingers into Phil’s hair without looking up from his screen. Phil thinks of the many—too many—tabs on his chrome window open to cute animal videos and phanart and frowns at his predictability. 

“Mrrrngfff.” Phil’s not sure if he was trying to form any actual words or not, but Dan will probably figure it out anyway. Even if knowing each other so well can make him feel a bit prickly and restless sometimes, it’s great in times like these when Phil doesn’t quite have the words to put to his disquietude.

“So the latter, then?” Phil rubs his stupid, shameless eight years of committed relationship grin into the warm skin of Dan’s thigh, pushing up his boxers a bit higher.

“They all think I hate the concept of marriage.” It’s odd, Phil thinks, the way this conversation topic with Dan still gives him a bit of a thrill, all these years later. They know it’s a someday, a someday that’s creeping a lot closer to soon, recently. It’s not spoken in ‘if’s’ and ‘maybe’s’ like it was a few years ago, or nervously danced around like it was before that. It’s a topic that’s sometimes fun to talk about, sometimes a bit stressful if they go too far down the road of actual logistics and how not to invite the entirety of Phil’s extended family. It’s a plan, a promise for a near and drawing nearer future where their commitment is present and open, if not directly acknowledged. But it’s still something he hasn’t done with Dan yet. And while there are technically an infinite number of things he hasn’t done with Dan, in the realm of realistic Dan and Phil life things this one feels almost achievable yet still just out of grasp enough to send a silly, besotted tingle over his skin.

“Well, it is just a piece of paper,” Dan says, jiggling his legs a bit to give Phil a good jostle He’d figured it out before Phil himself had even known it was a thing, the way little touches could pull Phil out of his own head when his worries got too much.

“You know that’s not what I meant!”

“They don’t. They quote that all the time.” So he’s noticed too. Dan’s tone is light, teasing, but Phil wonders if it bothers Dan, gives him the same peculiar frustration of not being well enough understood by the audience they purposefully maintain a carefully manufactured distance from. He knows Dan takes great pride in their relationship and freakish connection. Dan likes people to know they’re in sync, that they get each other in ways no one else can quite achieve. As many times as he’s down-played a family vacation or an old careless tweet, he never misses an opportunity to brag openly and obnoxiously about their ability to guess each other’s thoughts.

“Yeah, well they don’t know a lot of things. Like how you always stick your freezing hands up the back of my shirt, or that you like to joke about choking and daddy kinks but you’re actually a giant loser who’s into–”

“No fair. No kinkshaming zone, remember?” Dan pinches his side and he wriggles a bit, burrowing further into Dan’s lap, accidentally knocking Dan’s laptop slightly, into the gap between Dan’s thigh and the arm of the couch. Dan leaves it there, and it feels like a victory in a battle for Dan’s attention that he’s always won anyway.

“Oh, I thought you said full kinkshaming zone. This isn’t what I agreed to.” Phil has to dodge another pinch, but Dan’s moving on already.

“Besides, they’re probably just joking around.”

“Mmm,” is all Phil can think to say. Are they? Their audience always seem perplexingly serious to him. The two of them have talked about this more times than Phil can keep track of, and their audience is kidding, but their audience is serious, and either way it’s best to leave them to it and avoid giving them anything to stoke the flames. He knows he should drop it, for his own mental wellbeing and for the limited amount of patience Dan has for interruption when he’s got the scrolling position enabled. Phil finds himself continuing anyway. “Does it all come from that one stupid thing I said in that Sims video? I said ‘if it’s an unhappy one.’” Dan snorts and grabs at Phil’s hands, opening his mouth to mock Phil’s ability to make proper air quotes probably, but Phil pulls them away. “And I was mostly kidding anyway. You know how I get with a little power over video game characters.”

“You wreak havoc and make everyone fuck.”

“But I don’t actually think marriage is just a piece of paper. It’s an important commitment, a symbolic gesture, a–” 

“Outdated formality designed to transfer land and keep women under the power of men?” Phil feels Dan shift underneath him, sitting up straighter as he delivers this little speech. He rolls his eyes, because he face is still buried in Dan’s leg so he can.

“See, if only they could hear you, they wouldn’t think I’m the one against marriage!”

“Well, feel free to start waxing poetic about marriage and love on the gaming channel, but they’re gonna start going crazy and think we’ve gotten engaged again.”

“How many times can we get engaged, though?” Phil turns his face up to catch the grin on Dan’s face, and grins despite himself.

“At least three, if you count Japan, Singapore, and Isle of Mann, apparently.”

“You did like that wedding venue tweet when we were in Japan, so that one’s entirely your fault.”

“Accidentally!”

“Whatever you say.”

“Maybe I have to keep proposing to you because you’re so resistant to the institution of marriage, you know?”

“Shut up, I hate you.”

“No you don’t. You love me. You want to sign a piece of paper with me. You’re a giant sap.”

It’s true. Phil loves romance. He believes in fate and meant to be and happily ever after. How can he not, with his parents and grandparents as examples? With the luck he’s had in his own love life, at least in this relationship, and finding Dan at such a relatively young age. He whines to Dan when there’s been too many sports episodes of their sports animes in a row and wriggles further into his seat excitedly when a hot springs episode comes on, putting down his phone or laptop for once to pay full attention. He predicted Dan with tarot cards and he’d never admit it to anyone—aside from Dan, who rolls his eyes, but secretly loves it—but it makes him just as emotional as it seems to make their audience. Phil loves love and he loves tradition and he can’t wait for the day when he gets to commit his love to Dan for the rest of their lives in front of all their friends and family. And eat a giant cake and get a little too drunk and dance badly with all of his extended family, who are probably fighting in the background and comparing it to their own weddings. That all sounds like heaven to him.

It’s not something he’s ever felt particularly compelled to share with the internet, though, so it’s unreasonable that this bugs him. He knows that. He wants his audience to have a surface level view, to get things wrong and not know what’s actually going on behind the scenes. Above all he wants his relationship private, kept away from clamoring hands and prying eyes that claim ownership where it doesn’t exist and create maddening scrutiny from wild assumptions and boundary crossing.

They shouldn’t know that he wants a big but not too big wedding with lots of friends and family that will be hard to hide, or catch on that the itch has been getting harder to ignore recently. That they’re not engaged, but they sometimes tell strangers they are, for convenience or the little thrill of it. That they considered getting engaged last year, but decided against it because Dan couldn’t shake his desire for a ring he’d have to take off anytime they filmed or went outside, and neither of them wanted that constant reminder of what their career has meant for their personal lives, both good and bad. The more their audience knows, the more likely they are to obsess and sleuth and guess, and they’re eerily good at guessing, so they keep it all out of sight.

“When we get married, it’ll be more than a piece of paper.” His own words surprise him, but they don’t seem to phase Dan.

“I know.”

“They won’t know.” Dan pauses before responding, and Phil turns his head back over, pressing his lips against Dan’s thigh in a not quite kiss. 

“I thought we didn’t want them to know.”

“We don’t.”

“But you also do?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. This is hard and confusing.” Dan’s nails scrape against Phil’s scalp gently, and Phil leans back into it, ignoring the voice that tells him head scratches are Dan’s secret weapon for when Phil gets particularly wound up.

“Your two least favorite things. Except in bed.”

“Shut up, that doesn’t even makes sense.”

“We can tell them, if you want.” Phil’s not entirely sure if Dan is offering because he’s really okay with it, or because he knows Phil will turn down the offer, and maybe Dan’s not sure either. This is still new territory, it being something to be offered, and Dan hasn’t been able to shake the shadow of uncertainty in his voice just yet.

“I don’t want to, like, announce our marriage like some sort of–”

“Normal couple?”

“Normalness leads to sadness.”

“Don’t quote yourself, it’s gross.”

“You’re gross.”

“Oh yeah? Well maybe if I’m so gross you should run off with your soulmate surfer bro and live happily ever after with him.”

“You’re my soulmate.”

“You’re being gross again.”

“You think we’re soulmates too.” They fall into silence. Dan won’t disagree because he does secretly agree, with the general concept if not the exact definition, but he refuses to concede that point. Phil’s sure of it, even though Dan continues to protest. 

Now that they’ve paused their bickering, Phil feels the fight slip out of him. It still feels slightly off that a significant portion of their audience believes this incorrect thing about him, but he knows he’s not going to say anything. He’s sure he’ll get worked up over it again at some point, but right now that sounds exhausting enough to keep the panic at bay.

“They know we love each other,” Dan says quietly, his hand stilling to rest on top of Phil’s head, the warmth of his palm spreading over Phil’s scalp. “That we’re committed to each other.”

“There’ve been a lot of open relationship theories floating around lately.”

“Okay, well a, you can be committed to each other in an open relationship and b, since when have you kept such close tabs on phan theories?” There’s a bit of genuine concern in Dan’s voice by the time he reaches the end of his sentence, once he’s gotten the teaching moment out of the way. “Are you actually bothered by this? You know how I feel. If it’s something you need, I’m happy to tell them.” They’ve had the conversation countless times before, in endless different ways, moods, and settings. What holds them back now is that neither feels passionately about taking that next step and dealing with the inevitable repercussions. They’ve both come to a place where they wouldn’t be upset, exactly, if the other suddenly felt the need to come out in some formal way, about their sexuality, relationship, or both.

“No. I don’t need. I just-” Just what? Just wonder sometimes what his life would be like without the shadow of their constant surveillance. What it would be like if they could be more open, if still not performative, with their relationship. Of course he does, but he always comes to the conclusion that what he has– what they have– is completely worth it. Because he’s a romantic and he wouldn’t have their story any other way. “I’m just looking forward to it. Being married to you.”

“Me too.” They both know this is not ‘just.’ There’s more to it and maybe Phil doesn’t even fully know what that is yet. It will probably continue to fester and he’ll bring it up a few more times, gripe about it in one way or another until Dan confronts him with his annoyingly effective communication strategies he learned in therapy and makes him deal with what’s actually bugging him. 

Maybe they’ll wind up making a full blown coming out video where they sit down and talk about how they met and what they mean to one another and who steals who’s blankets—Phil steals Dan’s—and who enforces regular dinner dates—Phil, though Dan often gets more elaborate when he’s in charge of plans. Or maybe they’ll shut off the cameras off for good and fade into the waning popularity that’s been pursuing them for years. Most likely it’ll be some happy medium between those two extremes.

Whatever happens, Phil knows it will sort itself out. Most days, anyway. He trusts Dan to hear what he needs and help him figure it out when he doesn’t know himself. And one day, when he’s lucky enough to marry the man he’s loved for nearly a third of his life now, it will be so much more than just a piece of paper.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! [Tumblr post here.](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/184441916397/just-a-piece-of-paper-g-25k-summary-phil)


End file.
